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US-China trade war: China fights back

For the US, getting tough on trade with China is seen as just punishment for years of unfair trading practices. The BBC's Karishma Vaswani visited businesses in China to find out what this trade war looks like from their perspective.

From Monday, US tariffs of 10% on $200bn (£152.9bn) worth of Chinese goods come into effect on almost 6,000 products, ranging from handbags to textiles. That means almost half of what China sells to the US is now subject to tariffs.

But China is fighting back.

It will retaliate by placing tariffs of 5% to 10% on $60bn worth of American goods.

I saw that steely resolve on display when I visited a pipe factory on the outskirts of Beijing.

Hebei Huayang Steel Pipe (HHSP) is one of the largest steel pipe producers in the province.

As I walked into the sprawling factory, the first thing that hit me was an overwhelming stench of burned steel.

He was also defiant in the face of the trade war, saying it would hurt the US more than China.

"The Chinese government will not just sit back," he told us.

"The US has many big enterprises with a lot of vested interests and investments in China. If the US begins to attack the Chinese, then it will have a big impact on American businesses operating here - not just against China.

"Whoever has the will will win. But for now, I still believe China has the ability to keep things under control."

That's a sentiment I heard often during my trip to China.

Playing by the rules

When you listen to US President Donald Trump you'd be forgiven for thinking that the relationship between his country and China is one sided, with China winning and the US losing.

But from China's point of view, the US has also reaped multiple rewards here, as Wang Haiyou, president of the Center for China and Globalisation was keen to point out to me.

"Look at the last four decades since China and the US established diplomatic ties," he said to me in his office in Beijing.

"All the major US companies are in China. They all have a big operation in China. Some are even bigger than the US. You can't say that is not a success.

I put to Mr Wang that no one is disputing the US has made money in China - it was more a sense that China had not played by the rules, and that even if it had followed the letter of the agreements set out in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), it had not followed the spirit of the deal.

"If the US is not happy, it can always go and file their complaints there," he told me.

"They normally don't. China actually gets less complaints than the US in the WTO."

Still, there is a long-held view that China has cheated not just the US on trade, but other trading partners too.

And while not all of them agree with the strategy Mr Trump is using to go after China, his tariffs appear to be giving many others that China has done business with the confidence to voice their complaints more vocally.